Research Week looks to investigate Pokemon that have potential in Ubers, be it in stats, movepool, or supporting their team, to serve as an innovative choice in today's metagame. These are Pokemon that, for the most part, remain relatively untested. I've selected 3 Pokemon I feel, with help from everyone else, could see the rise of new and powerful sets, or the fulfilment of a particular niche. Perhaps the title is a bit of a misnomer; in fact, this installment (and likely future ones) of Research Week will continue as long as the discussion does, and that's where you all come in.

If you have anything to say about any of these Pokemon, please post about them! It doesn't matter if you've used them or have just faced them in battle, anything is fine (but please, do try them). Just be sure to back up your posts with good competitive reasoning, such as damage calculations! Posting replays showcasing the pokemon you selected is especially encouraged.

• Be open-minded, don't just say something is terrible and walk away; at least look into them and see what options they may be able to utilize!
• Feel free to theorymon, but make it clear that you are theorymon'ing. At the end of the week, however, I want discussion to move towards how useful the Pokemon actually are in Uber, and what sets are effective on them.
• Just because an analysis has been done for a Pokemon doesn't mean there isn't more to explore; it's quite possible that something might have gone unnoticed or is missing.
• Do not post in this thread complaining about the Pokemon I choose and/or suggesting ones we should do for future weeks. I want discussion to stay on topic about the 3 Pokemon we are "researching". Feel free to VM / PM me these suggestions, but don't expect the next research week to have all the Pokemon you suggested, or any of them.

So, the 3 Pokemon we will be looking at this research week are Dragonite, Volcarona, and Reuniculus.

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How useful are these Pokemon in Uber? What sets can they run effectively? What gives them trouble? What advantages do they have over other Pokemon? What roles can they fill in teams? Are they worth the team slot on your team or is it outclassed?

Discuss; the discussion that come out of this will surely be illuminating! Don't forget, you're not just limited to this topic to discuss these Pokemon. The #ubers irc channel is a perfectly suitable place to discuss them as well. Feel free to take the discussion to #pokemon as well. At the end of the discussion period, hope we can reach a general consensus on how good these Pokemon really are, and that we might find some interesting discoveries.

Alright, now that that's out of the way we can get to the fun part of this. First up, Reasearch Week will now have a duration of roughly two weeks. The reason for this is as follows:

The Research Week Challenge:

Users will use any number of the research week mons on their team

Users will attempt to reach as high as possible on the ladder with the Pokemon. Breaking past the 1350 mark on the ladder with your registered alt will earn you a spot on the Hall of Fame: Gold Class. Crossing the 1300 mark will secure you a Silver Class spot while a 1250 rating will earn you a Bronze Class spot. Post a screen-shot of your peak in order to achieve this, and a pastebin of your team.

Users will be expected to post their experiences with the pokemon they use, the teams they used, the problems they encoutered while trying to make the said pokemon work.

If a user does not participate in the discussion, he will be passed over.

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In order to participate in the challenge, simply post what Pokemon you're trying and your fresh new alt (yes, this is mandatory). Post battle logs, experiences with your team on the ladder, and generally how a Pokemon has worked out for you: past or present.

It has been noticed that the last few Research Weeks have been basically reduced to ladder runs. This completely defeats the purpose of Research Week where the idea is NOT TO see if a person can get a high ladder rating with an underused Pokemon but to subjectively assess as a community, whether that particular Pokemon is viable in the tier and discover its potential in the tier. In order to remedy this, an archive is going to be created including the past Research Week, highlighting great posts. From this Research Week onward, the most thoughtful researcher will also be rewarded alongside the user with the highest ladder rating. The reward scheme will be the same.

Rewards:

Winning the Research Week challenge grants you prizes. Here's the rewarding system:

Winning one RW will grant you VOPs (+) in #ubers.

Winning two RW challenges will grant you a larger avatar.

Winning three RW challenges will grant you a Custom Title.

Winning five RW challenges will grant you HOPs (%) in #ubers.

* You might get a Custom Title for winning two RW challenges, and a larger avatar for winning three.
** Getting HOPs in #ubers might take four wins, and maybe more, depending on our judgment if you deserve it or not.

Furthermore, quality posting may be rewarded with larger avatars or custom titles, even if you did not win the challenge. So get out and post!​

Okay, since I was the one who thought of this research week, I think I should say some stuff here. We chose Dragonite, Volcarona and Reuniclus as by the title suggests, they are the Pokemon that have been suspect tested in OU but never banned. I know Latios was one too, but since we know what Latios does (Dual Screen Memento and pretending that he still has Soul Dew), we decided that we're not going to include him. The point was the hypothetical "if they were banned, how would we use them, and what would we put on their analyses?"

When we were drawing up this RW, we realised that all three of these Pokemon may not be viable or may just be totally outclassed in the Ubers metagame. Indeed, when Theorymon and I were testing Dragonite and Volcarona, we found them ridiculously underwhelming (Dragonite was just meh, while Volcarona seemed to do well in sun and nothing else). I have not yet tested Reuniclus, but something tells me it'll be too weak and not bulky enough to be of any major threat in Ubers. I hope to be proven wrong, however. If you do find a Pokemon completely underwhelming and is not up to scratch, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SAY SO.

i tried 2 sets with dnite and both were horribly outclassed by ray. Sub ddance was used in an effort to set up on wat i thought would be common switch ins, ferrothorn and forretress. This failed horribly simply because if they didnt have one of those 2, he was just dead weight (even when they did, he still failed most of the time). A banded set worked out decently.

Icarus, the retard who was way out of his league and hence died horribly by falling from the sky. Fits him quite well tbh. While Rayquaza performs this almost a million times better, Dnite does have the advantage of being bulkier...... which is cancelled out by all the monstrous atkers in ubers with ice and dragon moves.

Edit: Reuniclus is literally completely out-classed by mewtwo. Can we try and have something that's not completely and totally out-classed? Because volc is the only thing here that isn't. It doesn't even have to be OU, let's get qwilfish up here some time!

lol, going to try Reuniclus on a TR team, as D-Nite is outclassed by Quaza due to better offensive stats and Speed, and Salamence due to Moxie. Multiscale is cool and all, but since it can be broken by just about any move not named Earthquake, idk how good it'll be. Volcarona is weak to all 3 forms of hazards, meaning that you'll have to pack a spinner / Espeon or Xatu for it to be effective. Not only that, but you'll also need to carry Groundon for sun support as well, meaning that you'll have 2 weaknesses to water already, and your hazard blocker won't help either, as both Tenta and Forry, the two common spinners, have trouble getting past Gira-O, the most common Uber spinnerblocker (Exca on sun is doubtful for me, but it still will have trouble to an EQ immunity)

Edit: Reuniclus is literally completely out-classed by mewtwo.

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In what sense? If you're using Reuniclus as a standard attacker, like in OU, of course you'll find it outclassed, mostly because it isn't bulky enough to tank all the powerful attacks in ubers, such as Orge's Water Spout. If I'm using Reiunclus (which I will be) I would use either a TrickOrb set to cripple switch-ins such as T-Tar, or a OTR set to use its low base Speed. Both sets set it apart from Mewtwo, as Mewtwo doesn't have Magic Guard to use TrickOrb, or low base Speed to use Trick Room.

Mewtwo can get trick as well, though, and can do everything reuniclus can do without having to set up TR while maintaining more offensive pressure, virtually the same bulk, and useful moves like will-o-wisp. I also can't see reuniclus realistically setting up TR and calm minds seeing how crappy psychic typing is in ubers. But I'm not uber whizz, so don't quote me on it. There just doesn't seem any reason other than this research week that you would ever competitively use reuniclus in ubers.

Ok, I won't quote, but I would never use a Calm Mind Reiunclus, OTR is TR + 3 attacks, maybe might add Recover in the mix, idk yet. All in all, it may have some viability, and this RW was made to prove it (or to screw around with us, who knows)

Ok, I won't quote, but I would never use a Calm Mind Reiunclus, OTR is TR + 3 attacks, maybe might add Recover in the mix, idk yet. All in all, it may have some viability, and this RW was made to prove it (or to screw around with us, who knows)

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Calm Mind + 2 attacks + recover may be alright against stall teams that don't have very good win conditions. Something like Calm Mind / Shadow Ball / Focus Blast / Recover may work, since Magic Guard is just that awesome.

If you do find a Pokemon completely underwhelming and is not up to scratch, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SAY SO.

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I find all these Pokemon completely underwhelming and not up to scratch. I don't mean to sound offensive but this is a terrible research week, everything has been proven to not work in Ubers basically before this. You have Reuniclus, a mon that can beat stall.... except stall is extremely rare. You have Dragonite, 'just another dragon' - completely outclassed by Ray/Mence and Volcarona that would be decent if Kyogre wasn't #1.

I find all these Pokemon completely underwhelming and not up to scratch. I don't mean to sound offensive but this is a terrible research week, everything has been proven to not work in Ubers basically before this. You have Reuniclus, a mon that can beat stall.... except stall is extremely rare. You have Dragonite, 'just another dragon' - completely outclassed by Ray/Mence and Volcarona that would be decent if Kyogre wasn't #1.

Moderator

Even though I ladder regularly for that "revitalize ladder" thing, I still see some RW mons. In particular, this RW has been disappointing. Celebi and Mew were interesting Pokemon last week, but as a regular player, these Pokemon didn't really do anything differently. As has been stated earlier, Mence/Ray > DNite. Volcarona meets SR + Rain + DTail + Roar + really any attack. Reuniclus is just god awful. The only merit it really has is Sash + TR, and as TR attackers go its base 125 SAtk < Dialga's 130 SAtk, access to LO/Lefties, typing and defensive stats to take hits. Any non-Sash set will just get KO'd by a strong attack, like a Palkia's Draco Meteor or Zekrom's Bolt Strike.

not to jump on the hatewagon but really, this RW blows. Landorus, Celebi and Jirachi have their niches at least (rain, sand, speed tier, typing, etc.). The "let's test these pokes because they are OU suspects" is a lame reason to justify a RW.

This week's mons don't do anything special. The paraflincher set for dnite poppy mentioned to me was interesting but just become really gimmicky. Volc is the only viable mon as it is a boosting sun sweeper but why not use venosaur or blaziken?